A progressive voice from the Carolinas, featuring views, news, and dialogue that the corporate media doesn't. In the Mountains of Western North Carolina, Mills River is a rural community about 20 minutes from Asheville.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

US Foreign Policy Blowback

"...In an editorial by The Nationposted Wednesday,
the magazine's editors also invoke US transgressions in the context of
Ukraine. "Yes, Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea trespasses on
international law," they write, but it's "difficult to bear US
officials’ invocation of a principle that Washington itself has often
violated (see, most recently, Kosovo and Iraq, the latter now marking
the eleventh anniversary of an illegal US invasion and occupation)."

And author and historian Howard Friel, also at Common Dreams,
defies the western media's dominant anti-Putin line not to defend
Russian motives or actions, but to cast a light on U.S. violations that
now make it impossible for Washington to stand as a moral authority on
issues of international law. In a string of rhetorical questions, Friel asks:

Did Putin invade Iraq and destroy that society?
Did Putin lie to the American people about the reasons for that invasion?
Did Putin kill one million Iraqis?
Did Putin spend $1 trillion of the American public’s money on the Iraq invasion?
Did Putin invade Afghanistan?
Did he spend $700 billion on the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan?
Does Putin have a “kill list” to murder suspected terrorists without due process and outside any field of battle?

According to The Nation editors, the only thing that can now
resolve the crisis in Ukraine and the brewing 'Cold War' redux between
Russia and the western powers is a true and meaningful focus on
diplomacy. Threats of military escalation must be averted, they say, and
the "war parties" on all sides must be pushed aside in the name of a
peaceful agreement going forward..."

“In the councils of government we must guard against
the acquisition of power, whether sought or unsought,
by the military industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties and democratic processes.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower
from his final address to the nation
January 17, 1961

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
--Thomas Jefferson